Fostering

Fosters care for shelter animals in their own homes — and with the ShelterSync mobile app, the time you spend with a fostered animal counts just like time at the shelter. The shelter sees the activity, the animal's story stays complete, and nobody has to relay updates over text messages.

Who this page is for: foster caregivers using the mobile app, and the staff who support them.

Getting set up

1. The shelter creates your account (often from an imported list) and sends you an account setup email. Open the link on your phone, enter your date of birth (used only to apply the right privacy protections — it never appears in reports or to other volunteers), and choose a password.
2. Sign in to the mobile app. If your shelter requires device approval, your first sign-in waits for a staff member to approve your phone — you'll have limited access until then.

What you see

The Browse tab shows the animals currently placed with you. If you're also a shelter volunteer, you'll see the in-shelter list too — your own placements carry a "Fostered by you" badge. When no animal is placed with you, Browse simply says so; animals appear the moment the shelter records a placement.

Recording time with your foster animal

There are two ways to log a session:

• Live — open the animal, tap Start activity, pick what you're doing (a walk, play, socialization…), and end it when you're done. You'll be asked to fill the same short follow-up survey volunteers fill at the shelter.
• Afterwards — real life happens away from the phone. Open the animal and tap Log a past session: pick the activity type, when it started and ended, and add any notes. The same follow-up survey appears right after.

A few rules keep the data honest: a past session can't be in the future, can't start before the animal was placed with you, can't be longer than 12 hours, and can't overlap another session you already logged for that animal.

Sharing observations

You see things the shelter can't: how the animal sleeps, eats, and behaves in a real home. If your shelter has set up observation forms, a placed animal's screen shows an Add observation button — answer a few structured questions (and add a note if you like), and your report lands directly in the animal's behavioral record, alongside the shelter's own assessments. Staff reviewing the animal see it marked as a foster observation, so your at-home perspective is part of the picture when decisions get made. It takes well under a minute, and there's no score or grade — it's simply your observation, in your name, at the time you shared it.

Why it matters

Fostered animals have activity goals just like animals at the shelter. Your sessions count toward those goals, and the shelter's foster program view shows coordinators which animals are getting engagement at home — so a quiet week is noticed, not lost.

For staff

• Placements are recorded from the animal's Transfer action (see Moving animals) with a placement reason and an optional expected return date.
• Foster accounts are managed on Users & roles — including bulk account-setup invites for imported fosters.
• Fosters see only the animals placed with them; that's enforced by the server, not the app.
• Observation forms are survey templates with the Foster observation purpose, designed in the survey builder. Submissions appear on the Assessments page in the animal's behavioral timeline, badged as foster observations — never scored, and never affecting the animal's handling tier or availability.